Headlines

Peter Suderman

How the IRS scandal threatens ObamaCare

Obamacare is not merely a massive overhaul of the health care system. It is also a substantial expansion of the Internal Revenue Service. …

Perhaps more importantly, however, the agency has already launched an attempt to subvert the health law’s clear statutory language. As I noted earlier today, the text of the legislation specifies that the law’s tax credits for private insurance are available in exchanges created by states. It does not provide for those subsidies to be available in exchanges run by the federal government. Yet the IRS rule regarding the tax credits essentially ignored this, and allowed for the subsidies to be available in both state and federally run exchanges.

What this means is that the IRS is already taking creative liberties with the administrative duties it is assigned under the health law. It’s already attempting to use its power to expand Obamacare beyond the specifics of its statute. It’s already ignoring the text of the law when doing so suits its purposes.

Blowback

Trackbacks/Pings

Comments

What this means is that the IRS is already taking creative liberties with the administrative duties it is assigned under the health law. It’s already attempting to use its power to expand Obamacare beyond the specifics of its statute. It’s already ignoring the text of the law when doing so suits its purposes.

Well then, we’ll just have to see what Chief Justice Roberts has to say about that.

To monitor compliance with these rules, the IRS and HHS are now building the largest personal information database the government has ever attempted. Known as the Federal Data Services Hub, the project is taking the IRS’s own records (for income and employment status) and centralizing them with information from Social Security (identity), Homeland Security (citizenship), Justice (criminal history), HHS (enrollment in entitlement programs and certain medical claims data) and state governments (residency).

IRS agent: It says here, in your file, that you voted for Mitt Romney, read Ayn Rand, and you like the Constitution, and you are running a high fever and experiencing excruciating abdominal pain … Let us see…. We can get you an appointment to see a doctor in June 2023.

Who has standing to sue the IRS for its failure to obey the law? Would it be the states who have created exchanges (on the theory that their federal taxpayers are being ripped off by being forced to support subsidies for people in states that did not create exchanges, contrary to the express terms of the statute)?

Aren’t most of the states that are creating exchanges Dim-controlled states? Would they even be willing to sue the Obama administration? Who else might have standing?